Examples Of Figurative Language In Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain, the author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn uses several techniques to describe the natural world. Twain employs the use of figurative language – specifically personification and similes – to help create imagery. All of these things contribute to Twain’s description of the natural world. When Twain uses personification to describe nature, and compares it with the utilization of similes to describe how the inside world is affected by nature, it creates imagery that helps the reader understand the mood. These things help Twain achieve his purpose of describing the natural world for the reader. Probably the biggest use of figurative language in the passage is personification. From lines six through fifteen, Twain is personifying nature to help the reader not only understand the natural world that Huckleberry Finn is surrounded by, but also to help the reader understand the mood of the passage, as well as how Finn is feeling. For example, when describing several animals, he makes them out to be crying mourners; “…an owl, away of, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die…” (7-9). This really helps Twain achieve his purpose of describing the natural world because it defines the “characters” (the animals) that the natural world contains. This also

Twain uses similes to liken the inside world to the natural world, as if to carry on this reoccurring theme of tired silence and death. Twain compares the silence of the house to the silence of death, saying that “…the house was all as still as death now…” (28). This helps Twain accomplish his purpose because he makes the stillness of the outside, where everything is “who-whooing” about death, and carries it throughout the house, as if to say that this lonesome feeling that Finn is describing is inescapable, in civilization or the natural